Carnival of Leadership Development

Developing leaders and indeed ourselves is imperative if business is going to flourish. Here are the latest set of blog articles that will help you develop your thinking, your management style and achieve career success.

Anna presents Leadership, comfort zones and related rant posted at The Engaging Brand

Mike King presents Preparing for your own performance review. posted at Learn This, saying, "These are some specific things that if consistently practiced, will make a big difference to improve your reviews every year."

Warren Wong presents Why You Should Be Careful When Your Business Is Going Well posted at Personal Development for INTJs, saying, "Some reasons to be cautious when your business has been doing really well."
GreatManagement presents Get Rid Of Procrastination Once And For All posted at The GreatManagement Blog, saying, "Everyone suffers from procrastination at some stage in their lives."

Norman Morse presents The Serene Toastmaster. posted at The Game of Self.

American Entrepreneur presents Expert Q & A: Creating an Effective Culture for Your Small Business posted at American Entrepreneurship.

Edith presents If a Seven-Year-Old Can Do It, You Can Do It Too! posted at Edith Yeung.Com: Dream. Think. Act..

Karl Goldfield presents Building a plan part 6e: Execution - Opportunities - Value makes the sale | Coaching Sales Champions posted at Coaching sales champions.

Roger Carr presents What Makes A Great Nonprofit Leader posted at Everyday Giving Blog.

Wally Bock presents Leadership: Developing leaders the natural way posted at Three Star Leadership Blog, saying, "Leaders learn to lead by leading. They don't learn to lead in a classroom. They don't learn to lead from a book. Great leadership development programs provide tools and support to help developing leaders learn faster and more effectively."

Michael Bass presents How a manager can turn employees into a team posted at Debt Prison, saying, "Are you the type of person that intelligent, educated, positive people will want to work for? Are you a happy person that is easy to get along with while still demanding the utmost in satisfaction for your customers? Can you work with a variety of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, leading them in a common goal of teamwork and success?"

wilson ng presents First Things First ? how to Work and Take care of your Boss! posted at Reflections of a BizDrivenLife, saying, "Advancing on the job means working with your boss! Get the boss to be pushing behind for you, rather than try to overtake him. Don’t gain your confidence by putting down the boss. Try to gain it by having the boss pull you up!"

GreatManagement presents What Every Manager Can Learn From Barack Obama posted at The GreatManagement Blog, saying, "What Every Manager Can Learn From Barack Obama"

Warren Wong presents How To Get Whatever You Want From Anyone posted at Personal Development for INTJs, saying, "How to get whatever you want from anyone you want - from money to sex to love!"

Michael Walsh presents Individual Accountability in Business posted at Business Growth, saying, "This is a good leadership development article"

Matt presents Good vs great posted at Life is your Career.

James D. Brausch presents Failure? The Doorway to Success posted at Internet Business Blog.

Mark Riffey presents If Michael Jordan is ok with failing, isn’t it ok for you? posted at Business is Personal.

Mark Riffey presents Marketing opportunities: As perishable as lettuce. posted at Business is Personal.

Alvaro Fernandez presents Maximize the Cognitive Value of Your Mental Workout posted at SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution, saying, "Why our brains need constant novelty and learning...doing more of the same in one same domain, no matter how intellectually stimulating it may feel, is not enough "mental workout"."

Joshua C. Karlin presents Powerful Yet Reasonable Goals posted at Marketing & Fundraising Ideas.

Charles H. Green presents Trust Is the New Leadership In A Flat World posted at Trust Matters, saying, "In a flat world your suppliers and customers are your partners, and leadership requires building trust."

Shawn Driscoll presents 5 Massive Mistakes Keeping You Stuck posted at Shawn Driscoll.

Rich Vosler presents Lessons From The Geese posted at Sales Training Tips.

Mark @ TheLocoMono presents The 7 Lessons of Growth posted at TheLocoMono Website, saying, "7 insights on developing your leadership skills."

Ralph Jean-Paul presents Bounce Back After Failure posted at Potential 2 Success, saying, "Some of the most successful people in the world credit their success to a failure they’ve experienced. Bounce back from your failure and you might become one of them. Learn about the different types of failures and how to recover from them successfully."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of leadership development using our carnival submission form.
Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Leadership is for today

There is a wonderful quote from Mother Teresa that says

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has yet to come. We have only today. Let us begin"

Leadership needs you to balance that short term and long term thinking. Creating that dream of tomorrow...the vision of where you want to take the company or the team. However, what we do have for certain is today....dreams without actions become nightmares within the business world.

So....be thinking about tomorrow, but be taking action against your goals today.

What is your success?

Too often we judge our success by others and this can make us feel miserable. Remember to define your own success, don't compare only to your own goals. The key is being true to yourself, true to your values.

Define your success before other's do, this will be much more satisfying.

Also, remember that we are all different and ensure you know how each person in your team defines their own success. Don't assume it is the same as yours....find out by asking, listening and then you can help them create a successful future.

Engaging People In the Company Vision

Words are powerful, incredibly emotive and can be used to really ignite the passion in people. Here are 3 great examples of ho

1. "It's the place people come for refuge - a 3rd place not home not work" Starbucks
2. "It is more than just a resort; it's a means of rediscovering oneself, of inventing an entirely new me" Club Med
3. "The experience enlivens the senses, instills well being and fulfills even the unexpressed wishes and needs of our client" Ritz Carlton

Now look at your vision...does it stoke the same level of emotion, is it too general like surpassing customer expectations, being the best etc? Does it read like words put together at a "facilitated brainstorming session" or does it paint a powerful picture that people can see and engage with?

Do you REALLY understand your business?

I am a believer in understanding all aspects of the business to be a better manager. Here are some ideas on how I increase both my knowledge and that of the team.

1. Invite other managers to come to team briefings and explain their goals, successes and how they work.
2. Attend other team meetings to explain our goals.
3. Visit one department per month to work through their process, to understand the full supply chain.
4. Arrange at least yearly for senior managers and Executives to walk through the full supply chain so they can see for themselves issues, progress and success.
5. Go to lunch with someone from outside your normal peer or team group.

It is important that you work across the organisation, understanding how an idea becomes purchased by a consumer. It also helps you to contribute more fully at meetings.

Effective Teams

The Courage Institute said that effective teams exhibit 5 strengths

1. Candor - speaking and hearing the truth
2. Purpose - pursue lofty and audacious goals
3. Will - Inspire hope, spirit and optimism
4. Rigor - Invent new knowledge and make it work
5. Risk - empower, commit, invest in relationships

5 thoughts for you to think about and how your team rate against these criteria

Focus - the key to shorter working hours

Sam Ewing said "It's not the hours you put into your work, it is the work that you put into the hours"

Successful people have the ability to focus. They know what their objectives are, how to achieve them and then get on it with it!

If you find that you are not achieving what you want to despite the long hours then take 5 minutes and look at what you have been working upon during the day. Long hours lead to a lack of focus, and tiredness. Tiredness leads you then to not be able to work to your optimum, you take more breaks - a quick gossip, a few more coffees, longer meetings etc

Focus is key so proudly on your table put your personal objectives.....then each day look at your commitments and ensure that they are achieving your objectives.

8 Word Legacy

Over at our sister blog -The Engaging Brand - they run a podcast called The Engaging Brand which looks at motivating and inspiring people at work and they have a lovely question at the end of the interview...what do you want your 8 word legacy to be?

This is a great thought...try writing one it is difficult, but it helps to give you focus to your life.

What is yours....feel free to share one

Quick Tip to help focus and goals

Why not use screen savers and mobile phone wall papers to publicise your vision. Get someone in your team to design one and make it relevant to your team. Or you could use general motivational statements like

"How will I make a difference today?"

or list the 3 key objectives. You could run a competition for the family member to come up with the best screen saver each month and give an iTunes voucher or Amazon voucher to the winning entry....

The only word of advice - forget corporate jargon or speak! Make it sound real and something people can engage with....

Overworked?

If you think you are busy - you are! We all look for quick fixes - treo's, blackberry, filofax, lists etc but none of these items will make you less busy, indeed can increase time pressure.

To solve time pressure you need to look at

1. An average worker gets interrupted every 5-7 minutes for 5 minutes! Control your interruptions, if they don't add value then don't allow others to take away your most precious resource - your time.
2. Review your objectives and make sure that your time is concentrated on achieving them. Often we waste time on easy things to do, but don't let these distract you.
3. Plan to get your objectives achieved by 3pm each day. Too many people expand work to the 8-6 mentality.
4. Check your inbox at 3/4 times a day. Outside those times don't be sidetracked by the email.
5. Be honest. What is REALLY taking your time? Are you choosing distractions? Be honest, and look at the real reason you are allowing your time to be managed by others. Then deal with the root cause.

Make Targets Exciting

Words like objectives, ,metric, KPI's are all banded around but they are not passionate words. If you want to engage people in achieving targets why not bring some creativity to it?

I bet you have someone in your team, or in your business with some artistic ability. Set a visible target here are some examples

1. Race track - move the car around to the finish line which has the target on it.
2. Archery - move an arrow with the bulls eye as the target.
3. Themes - so at Christmas work up the branches on the tree.
4. Horse race - with the winning post as the target and the horse gets nearer.

The key is to bring fun and creativity to it.